Gordon Buchanan on his new documentary series Tribes, Predators and Me

ADVENTURER Gordon Buchanan wrestles with a giant anaconda in his new documentary series.

Gordon Buchanan, a wildlife cameraman who’s worked on Springwatch and Big Cat Diary, and presented The Bear Family And Me, is accustomed to seeing large predators in the flesh. He’s also used to keeping himself at a safe distance when looking through a lens at these deadly animals.

So understandably, Gordon’s fear levels were off the scale when, for his new TV series, he had to actually handle a giant anaconda in the Ecuadorian rainforest when he went out snake-hunting with the Waorani tribe.

To wrestle the snake you have to be strong and have absolute trust in those around you

Gordon Buchanan

“On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being ‘I’m out of here’, I was at about nine point five on the fear scale,” recalls Gordon, 43. “Catching anacondas is a way of the Waorani demonstrating their fearlessness and proving to their community and each other that the warrior spirit is still alive within them.

My mind had images of them picking up a metre-and-a half snake as a symbolic gesture. But this snake was so much bigger.”

It’s all part of Gordon’s latest series for BBC2, Tribes, Predators And Me. In it Gordon gets up close to, and in some cases handles, some of the Earth’s most dangerous beasts of prey in remote corners of the earth.

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'To wrestle the snake you have to be strong and have absolute trust in those around you'

A fierce lion and an enormous crocodile are also featured. He did this by staying with four native tribes who live alongside these deadly predators.

Along with the Waorani, Gordon resided with the Ju/’Hoansi bushmen of Botswana, who live alongside fierce lions, and the tribes of Papua New Guinea, who capture and sometimes eat giant crocodiles.

Naturally, dealing with the animals first hand was a far cry from viewing them from behind a camera. “As a cameraman you’re detached from the animal and observing it in a certain way,” explains Gordon.

“Spending time with tribal groups, you realise they have a spiritual relationship with the animals.

“To them, to truly understand a creature, especially a big predator, it has to enter your mind and heart and be part of you.”

Reflecting back on his encounter with the giant anaconda, Gordon explains that the Waorani believe they derive strength from holding the creatures for several minutes – though it can take four or five men to subdue and catch it. “To wrestle the snake you have to be strong and have absolute trust in those around you,” he says.

In Botswana, Gordon lived with bushmen who live cheek by jowl with lions and who are brave enough to approach these deadly predators on foot – not from the safety of a Jeep, as Gordon is accustomed to. In one of the series’ most astonishing segments, Gordon joins three bushmen as they approach a female lion and attempt to shoo her and her cubs away from a kudu carcass they’re feasting on, so that they can take some of the kudu meat back to the tribe.

Again, with the anaconda, Gordon discovers that it’s all in the teamwork. “We were demonstrating unity,” says Gordon. “We were four men coming together as one entity and that’s what the lion sees. The lion can see fear and it can see confidence, so what I realised is that approaching the lion with fear would have got us into trouble. But if we approached together and with confidence it would work.”

Despite catching malaria during the making of the series, Gordon says it was a small price to pay to observe tribes that live in harmony with the natural world. “Just spending time with these people, you realise that human beings are capable of incredible things. For these tribes, surviving is about having a close relationship with the world around us.”